she thinks of us constantly, and
I finished The Privateer last night.
I think it’s based on a role playing game — at least, there’s a logo on the cover that says “Privateers and Gentlemen”, and that logo also appears on some role-playing materials that I found on eBay while I was searching for these books. However, I’m not sure which came first, and it doesn’t really matter because I bought and read the book because of the author: Walter Jon Williams, writing as Jon Williams, a well-known and very well-respected science fiction author. I’m not sure if he’s writing pseudonymously because he didn’t want people to associate these books with his SF work, or what, but the books are as good as I’d expect, and it’s refreshing to hear his distinct voice in this very atypical genre.
Anyways, the story is about one Malachi Markham, a privateer for the US in the Caribbean in and about 1776 through 1778. the book can be seen in a few ways — some people might see it as a well-written and accurate description of revolutionary-era naval combat, which is it, but it can also be seen as a character drama. Markham goes through a full arc in the story — beginning as a new captain on a privateer ship, gaining wealth and notoriety after a number of battles won by luck and skill, falling in love, having his heart broken, becoming harder and harder, and finally dieing ignominiously while stupefied by the effects of his laudanum addiction. The battles serve both as punctuation and as commentary on the progress of his story and are not gratuitous at all.
Which brings me to one thing I really enjoyed a lot about the book — it managed to avoid all of the traps that so many period novels fall into. The characters aren’t against slavery in a modern way — they were morally opposed to it in a way that many people of the time were, but they accepted it as a fact of life. The author also makes good comment on the quality of medicine at the time; the doctor is constantly bleeding people who have been shot and prescribing all kinds of horrible tinctures for people to drink, constructed based on ideas about “miasmic vapours” and such nonsense. At first I assumed that this was the typical “make fun of past beliefs” kind of thing, and partially it is, but the tragedy is that the doctor’s single legitimately efficacious remedy – laudanum – is what ends up killing Malachi in the end.
I’m now reading The Unpleasant Profession of Johnathan Hoag, a collection of short fiction by Robert A. Heinlein. Very good stuff.
Did you ever read Joel Rosenberg’s sci-fi novels about Jews in exile from Earth colonizing a planet they name Metzada/Masada and then becoming mercenaries?
I’ve not read those books, although I did quite enjoy Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame series — I should look out for it.
Of course, Malachi in this case isn’t Jewish — his father was a very religious and old-fashioned New Englander — his brothers are named Joshia and Jehu.
That was just the first thing that came to mind.
I wouldn’t say the Masada planet ones are good, but they’re okay. And your entries make it clear you’ve read much worse.